Washington National Parks

We rented E Bikes to do the Lake Cresent trail, and also hiked Hurricane Hill via Hurricane Ridge at Olympic. Both were amazing.


Rereading your post, I'd probably stay East of Seattle and concentrate on Rainier and The Cascades.
Olympic is a far drive West and then you'd have to double back.

also make sure you get to the beaches in Olympic. Some can get crowded but if you hike up our down the beach you can break free. The lodge on the beach is incredible

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North Cascades.

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The area around El Diablo dam is awesome.

If you are feeling ambitious, you can hike from Rainy Pass inside North Cascades to Stehekin (at the north end of Lake Chelan, otherwise only accessible by boat or plane). That's about 18 miles, but net downhill.

if you want to hit all those parks, i'd try and extend the trip by 2 days. If not, I'd spend more time in Olympic, it's one of the more unique parks in the US from the mountains to the coast line and the Hoh forest.
Ruby beach and Hoh forest were definitely must do's.
check out the Kalaloch lodge near Ruby beach if you want to stay on the pacific ocean...well worth it.

I agree with the other posters-those 3 parks are far apart from each other and you will end up spending a lot of time driving. We just got back from a 3 week PNW trip and visited Olympic and Rainier among other parks. I have been to North Cascade previously too.

Personally I would split the time between Olympic and Rainier and save North Cascades for another trip. Lots of recommendations from the previous posters on activities at those parks. On your way back to SeaTac from Olympic take one of the ferries across Puget Sound for a cool experience. If you'll are into these things go to Cape Flattery Washington-it's the northwesternmost point in the contiguous USA. It's near Cape Alava which is the westernmost.....

I would book your Airbnb as soon as you can-those parks are extremely popular in summer. We stayed in Port Angeles near Olympic and Ashford near Rainier-both very convenient for travel into the parks.

If you haven’t already done so, look into the America the Beautiful annual pass.

We did this a few years ago in the beginning of July. We drove from Denver and camped a lot.

We spent one night at Rainier then spent a few hours around Paradise. There was still several feet of snow so hikes were limited. Rainier is only as good as the weather there. If it’s clear it’s pretty awesome.
We drove from there to Olympic and camped near Rialto Beach. The walk along the beach to Hole in the Wall is a must at low tide. We went to Sol Duc Falls and Hoh Rainforest but skipped Hurricane Ridge as we live in Denver so we see mountains daily. We spent two nights in Olympic.
We took the ferry to Seattle and spent the 4th there.
We went to North Cascades the next day and spent the day in the park doing a couple short hikes.

You won’t be able to see and do it all at any of the parks but you’ll see and a a lot. You can use that to plan a longer trip if desired.

Would love a report on Olympic NP when you get back.

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Definitely considering slowing down and leaving out Cascades for this trip

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i think thats what i would do, given your time frame. you really have to do all day hikes to appreciate north cascades

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i think thats what i would do, given your time frame. you really have to do all day hikes to appreciate north cascades

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I kind of disagree here. There are some great all day hikes in the Cascades but there are also some great places where the car does most of the work and you can roam around snapping photos. Artist Point/Mt. Baker is one of my favorite places in the whole state. Same with Diablo Lake. And you can pair them with cities like Burlington or Bellingham so there's something else to do when you hit wilderness overload.

But there's no real wrong answer. Each park is great in their own right. Just do your own research and determine which two you want to see most. Or better yet extend your vacation by a few days and hit them all.